Posted
by
timothyon Wednesday November 25, 2009 @05:59PM
from the postitioning-for-clarity dept.

Jiilik Oiolosse writes "The KDE community has killed the term K Desktop Environment (previously the Kool Desktop Environment). 'KDE' had previously ambiguously referred to both the community, and the complete set of programs and tools produced by the KDE community which together formed a desktop user interface. This set of tools, including the window manager, panels and configuration utilities, which KDE terms a 'workspace,' will now be shipped under the term 'KDE Plasma Desktop.' This allows KDE to ship a separate workspace called 'Plasma Netbook,' and independently market the various KDE applications as usable in any workspace, whether it be the Plasma Desktop, Windows, or XFCE."

It's pretty simple. They're trying to move past "KDE is a Linux desktop environment" into "KDE is a technology platform." And it's true, the KDE desktop and its underlying pillars, and the KDE application suite, are a lot more than just another Linux desktop.

Great! Now Linux will still have two major competing desktops. But now one of them could be one of several separate versions, or some applications on a different desktop, or a version of Windows running Koffice. Thanks, clarity committee!

Two? Linux will always have a million+ competing desktops. Linux is there to be customized, man, from the kernel on up. The fact that we currently think of the desktop as some specific thing is messing you up. Think about workflows. Think about a personal brand of work-fu or play-fu that you develop in partnership with your Linux machines. Your workflow is so good, you take on an apprentice to teach it to. He's thanking his lucky stars that someone who can create workflow experiences like you can would be willing to let him in the door to learn the trade.

I've said it before: You talk like Windows(TM) and Mac OS (TM) are these wonderful things because they're monoliths. But we've learned from monoliths and their creators that there is no "clarity" in that direction, only broken promises. One size doesn't fit all. The new landscape of devices and interfaces will give you clarity and specificity in exchange for your old monolith. If you won't trade it in, prepare to be left in the dust.

We'll look back at monolithic desktop computing and wonder what on earth kind of idiots we were to sit in front of this thing all day, all using the same basic type of chair, same keyboard with carpal tunnel syndrome included, and interfaces that worked like something only a masochist would use.

One size does fit all from a support point of view. If I want to walk a windows user through changing the desktop resolution, it's easy. If I want to find out which printer is their default printer, again easy. Good luck doing those in linux. Everything is all over the place. Linux will not gain mainstream acceptance until it is easy to support.

Question 1: To get to your applications, there is a button on the top or bottom corner of the screen. Is it a K or a foot print?
After that ask questions related to KDE or Gnome. It's not that difficult. Much easier in fact than convincing someone to tell you what version of Windows they have.

Everything is all over the place. Linux will not gain mainstream acceptance until it is easy to support.

If you're in a situation where you need to support a lot of Linux machines, use the same desktop on all of them. If someone wants to use something else, make it clear that you won't be able to walk them through common fixes. Don't be a dick about it though; if someone wants the login details for the IMAP server, don't say "oh I can't tell you because I can't walk you through how to set up kmail", just

That's all well and good if you're in charge of the user's machine. What happens if you're a printer manufacturer? Are you going to force a user to use KDE so that you can talk them through which icons to click to get the printer working?

Hm, you're looking at next week; my post is looking at next decade. The "support" you offer now will be vastly different, and changing screen resolution will be long obsolete except in enthusiast (read: hacker) markets.

The futuristic thing most closely related to screen resoluation is screen magnification, which will have been abstracted even further from the hardware in 10 years. If you've already used a system that has it, you might know why it's better, and different.

One size does fit all from a support point of view. If I want to walk a windows user through changing the desktop resolution, it's easy. If I want to find out which printer is their default printer, again easy. Good luck doing those in linux. Everything is all over the place. Linux will not gain mainstream acceptance until it is easy to support.

What follows is my personal opinion. Ideally, Linux can be the one (or one of the few) environment that caters to users who are technically inclined, know what they're doing, and either already know how to handle desktop resolutions and printers or are willing to combine basic literacy with Google in order to inform themselves. Users who don't want to learn how the machine works already have two major systems designed specifically for them: Windows and OSX. To me it makes perfect sense that Linux would be Open Source because Microsoft and Apple both recognize that the real money is gained by appealing to the general public and the general public is nearly technophobic.

I say that because I strongly believe that anyone who is literate and has access to Google can inform themselves. There is no conspiracy or secret cabal trying to hide any of the information one would need in order to understand any system I have named. It's out there, it's available, and it's accessible; it's purely a case of the average person not wanting to utilize it or otherwise to educate themselves. These are the folks who find "easy to use" and "supported by a vendor"** worth paying for. Therefore, the beauty of Open Source allows Linux to exist independently of the financial success of any particular company or organization so there is no reason to appease a crowd that major vendors already cater to. I also don't believe Linux could hope to displace Windows on the desktop without sacrificing many of the things I really enjoy about it. For these reasons, I am not concerned with whether Linux will ever bankrupt Microsoft and I don't view that as its purpose.

** I am far less familiar with OSX so I'll limit my comment here to Windows and Linux. I'll add that I don't really think Windows is very easy to use. I personally find it cumbersome, sometimes tedious, and sometimes difficult to automate. I would describe Windows as "easy to learn" but learning all about it doesn't make it much more convenient to use. I would describe Linux as having a much steeper learning curve by comparison, particularly if you are thorough and intend to master the command line. However, once the investment of overcoming that learning curve is made, you then find yourself with a system that doesn't get in your way or second-guess your actions. The more you master Linux, the more you can automate and the more you can get it to do with less and less effort on your part. The more you learn about it, the easier it is to perform complex tasks with an economy of expression that is difficult to find in a non-Unix system.

Also, the times I have needed support for Linux, what I found was a community of volunteers who welcomed me with open arms and provided a level of support that rivals or exceeds anything you would get with a commercial support contract. All of this was from volunteers who do what they do because they care. I believe that part of what made this possible is that the questions they were answering concerned real bugs and real problems. They were not drowning in a sea of trivial issues of the sort that are well-familiar to anyone who has ever worked a front-line technical support role. This allowed them to focus their efforts on issues that really did require the attention of experts which, in my opinion, makes a big difference.

Linux can be the one environment that caters to users who are technically inclined, know what they're doing, and either already know how to handle desktop resolutions and printers or are willing to combine basic literacy with Google in order to inform themselves.

Two words: Pulse Audio.

It shouldn't be necessary to Google for solutions to problems that haven't existed for the OSX and Windows user since the dinosaurs last walked the earth.

What does pulse audio have to do with this discussion? KDE uses aRTs for audio. Linux in general uses ALSA, unless you want to do something weird and unusual like play sound on another computer across a network.

Since when have MS Windows users been able to send their application's sound across the network without special software? Such software is probably expensive or has just as many problems as pulse audio anyway. How many regular people actually do something like that and why should anyone care?

And this thread just sums up the problem - in three posts we have now made mention of four different sound systems, and I'll go ahead and mention JACK, oss, and esd right here to make it 7. Various programs are written for each of these, and while some are more deprecated than others, the fact is that getting sound to work on linux is a LOT harder than it needs to be.

Sound stopped being a pain in windows with the advent of Win95 and PnP. Before that the windows bit of it wasn't actually that bad (midi mapping was a little painful, but generally the defaults weren't bad). Getting the DMAs/IRQs right was the real pain.

My linux system has a pretty nice wavetable audio board, but to be honest if I want to play something I just use timidity since I've given up on trying to get the hardware to actually work right. If I needed more than rudimentary sound I'd be really up the creek.

And nobody but a KDE developer really needs to concern themself with Phonon. The real problem here is people who don't know what they are talking about thinking that they have more problems then they actually do.

Linux will not gain mainstream acceptance until it is easy to support.

Actually that's not true, Linux is already much easier to support than Windows, but I'm others here will jump at the chance to explain that to you so I won't get into it. The biggest barrier to mainstream Linux adoption is Corporate email, messaging, and calendars. I've worked for several Linux focused companies the last ten years, one of them even had 'Linux' in it's name, but all of those companies still used Exchange for company communications. What I've realized is that IT departments are not choosing Exchange for _any_ technical or security reasons, they are making this choice because to choose anything else means they have to own that choice. With any other solution they actually have know pretty much everything there is to know about the package(s) they're implementing.

In most companies (that I've been exposed to of course) most of the IT staff are Windows only, maybe a few Ubuntu 'installers' sprinkled around. These people know where all the wizards are and which boxes need checkmarks but that's pretty much it. When there's a Linux based alternative to Exchange that this class of people can choose without feeling any risk, THEN you will a massive expansion of Linux on the desktop.

PS:I mean no slight to the intelligence of the IT staff -the OS they are using is essentially closed to them so they are merely not in the habit of digging deep, or radically altering the behavior of the OS or application stack. Also, job security is a really really powerful motivator when you have a family to care for, I can't fault anyone for making the safe choices.

Oh, fiddlesticks. Just change the way you look at it. There is no "linux" the way you want to use the term. There is Gnome on linux, and there is KDE on linux. You can walk a Gnome on linux user through changing desktop resolution if you are familiar with Gnome on linux. You can do the same for KDE on linux if you are familiar with KDE on linux. If you are ambitious, you can make yourself able to do both. And so on for Xfce, and a myriad of others. I wouldn't advise tring to become a "wizard" with a

I have no idea why "a low end non power user" would know or care what their display resolution is.

"Is there a way I can make my screen bigger?"

"The power went out, and when I turned my computer on, everything was really big and now I have to scroll to see anything."

...

I don't know what end users you know, but the ones I know definitely care:)

I've never seen xorg.conf get corrupted the way the windows registry can. And that's probably partly because the xorg.conf is not open in read/write mode, nor with pending changes currently cached by some part of the system (fs cache, hd cache, etc.). Because it's read-only, owned by root (which you're usually not logged in as), and, heck, not even opened after X loads up, it's highly unlikely to be damaged by a power failure. Meanwhile, Windows keeps that information in the registry, which is probably opened in read/write mode at all times, with far too much access given to normal applications that may damage this particular part of the registry, and with pending writes that may be interrupted by the power failure, resulting in a partially corrupted registry. So you need to know how to do that on Windows.

That said, I'd simply point them to krandr (I'm assuming kde here, though I suspect there's a gnome equivalent) and let them play with it. It sits nicely in the system tray, too. Dynamic changes to the resolution? Just as easy as on Windows. Like anything else, though, only once you know where to look. (krandr will remember its setting and go back to it during log-in, so it's still permanent even though you don't have write access to the xorg.conf file. Just like things should be.)

I've never seen xorg.conf get corrupted the way the windows registry can

The windows registry is not your ordinary file structure. It was, I believe, an outgrowth of the old Digital RSX-11M,RSTS/E virtual table construct (yes, I am that old). The original purpose of that file architecture was to make an indexible in-memory structure map to locations on disk when memory was very expensive, and available addressability even more so. It sort of made sense when the language of choice was 16-bit Basic Plus. It gave the ability to manage large-ish tables using only array addressing in a highly constrained environment, via a movable address window. Sort of like proto-virtual memory coupled with a tree index structure.

However as ol' Ben Franklin said, two removes equal one fire, and when the format adapted from RSTS/E -> VMS -> NT the format suffered a wee bit from bit decay.

Considering how cheap and powerful hardware is today, it makes eminent sense to simply read the file in and parse it as you please, so xorg.conf makes a lot more sense now. It's simpler, and that appeals to me.

In all, the file format used by the Registry was just a clever piece of code once to make more out of less. A noble venture, venerable, and rather obsolete.

Well, I would guess the difference between KDE desktop and netbook would be like Ubuntu and Ubuntu Netbook Remix, not heard any complaints there. And for the other part, there the division already exists you just don't hear much about it. Many KDE4 applications run on Windows now, so already there's a confusion since KOffice does in fact run outside KDE the environment.

Software engineers are technology enablers who provide the upward momentum that will ultimately allow for better streamlining the business' intelligence, and enhance the overall intrinsic quality as well as the underlying subjective, perceived, value of the company and its products.

Leveraging synergies is just gibberish talk to impress the customer base....This guy must be in marketing.

KDE Workspace
KDE provides workspaces. These provide the environment for running and managing applications and integrate interaction of applications. The workspaces are designed as generic environment for all kinds of desktop applications, not only applications built on the KDE Platform. They integrate best with applications following the standards used by the KDE Platform. There are different flavors of the workspace to address the needs of specific groups of users or adapt to specific hardware platforms:

Plasma Desktop or KDE Plasma Desktop. This is the workspace for desktop computers. It's built on the classical paradigm of a desktop environment.

Plasma Netbook or KDE Plasma Netbook. This is the workspace for computers with a small display, e.g. Netbooks.

Future KDE workspaces tailored to specific devices will follow a similar naming scheme

They almost remind me of Commodore, during the Amiga days. They have this really cool technology, but it doesn't work as well as you want it to and has some glaring deficiencies, and their marketing department is absolutely clueless.

Almost. They do have this really cool technology, there are glaring deficiencies but their marketing department isn't clueless. Go read the article, look at the diagrams and think it through. This move on their part makes complete sense and only makes official what has been unofficial for many years. Plus, by using their new scheme it removes some of the confusion around where and how KDE software works.

You were too specific, what you said actually applies to many software development outfits. (Queue next FTFY with 'Many'->'ALL' in 3..2.) We're blessed with so much excellent, stable elegant, technology at a line-by-line code level, that potential somehow seems to be mangled by the time it's put together as a package such that it barely works. Linux Desktop: where whole ends up being less than the sum of the parts.

They almost remind me of Commodore, during the Amiga days. They have this really cool technology, but it doesn't work as well as you want it to and has some glaring deficiencies, and their marketing department is absolutely clueless.
Except with the Amiga, it did work as well as you wanted it to, and its deficiencies weren't anything worth worrying about because the competition had even more glaring deficiencies.

Plasma isn't just that thing for making desktop widgets of dubious usefulness. What KDE has actually done is, in my opinion, a fairly smart design move regardless of whether you like their implementation.

Desktop widgets aren't applications, they are people extending the functionality of their desktop. What the KDE folks saw was that a well-designed API could be used to write the desktop UI itself (task bar, clock, pager, whatever), the things we used to use taskbar applets for (media player control, etc) and the flashy new desktop widgets. Instead of having a basic desktop and plastering a widget API on top, they've gone and unified the whole thing so you can use the same API to write taskbar applets, widgets or write replacement taskbars or... whatever. The various desktop elements are separate building blocks (plasmoids) that can be assembled together. They've also produced loads of bindings for this API to give folks the chance to write stuff in their favourite language.

The plasma netbook interface then takes some of the default building plasmoids, adds some new ones and then glues them together in a different way. So you can get a similar family look and similar functionality (and, fundamentally, the same desktop) but in a way that's optimised for a different form factor of device. I think that's actually pretty neat and somewhat reminiscent of the way you can configure and compile the core Linux kernel down for tiny machines or up to big iron whilst still getting the benefits of a common codebase.

There's a load of other cool stuff including a standard set of "data engines" which separate producing data from displaying it, thus making it easy to glue data sources together in interesting ways. Despite the various feature regressions that rewriting the desktop led to, it's a really neat architecture and should hopefully stand them in good stead for the future.

Step 1: "The KDE software compilation team happily acknowledges the bug report you have filed. Why we are happy? This bug report in fact concerns the KDE workspaces team. Or so we believe. Please be so kind as to file your bug report again at the appropriate place. If the KDE workplaces team should be able to prove that this is none of their matter, please be so kind as to reopen this bug. After reopening the bug here, please be aware that it will be triaged for at least nine months as a matter of policy. If you should be obnoxious, we may decide at our own will to extend the period to at least eleven months. Thank you very much for your assistance in making the K Desktop/Compilation/Workspace/Application Experience even better. Salvatory Clause: The expression "K Desktop experience" is only preserved for the purpose of backward compatibility."

Step 2: "Thanks a lot for filing a bug report. We certainly appreciate your willingness to enhance the K Workspaces Experience (formerly known as the K Desktop Experience, an expression preserved only in order to preserve backward compatibility). However, we have noticed in your bug report that Amarok 1.1.4 has been opened while encountering your bug. Since Amarok 1.1.4 certainly cannot be regarded as part of the K Software Compilation experience, you should consider updating. If this does not remove the bug you have encountered, please be so kind as to file a bug first against the respective K Software Compilation. If this should not prove to be sucessful in the next two years, please reconsider opening the bug here. Before that, it will be futile anyway."

For me, at least, "rebranding" has always had a certain stink of failure about it. (I like KDE, BTW, so don't lose your fucking minds.)

Witness:

Palm, Inc. > PalmOne + PalmSource > Palm, Inc.

Tropicana > Tropicana "generic crappy label" > Tropicana

AOL > LOL "remedial art-school" logo

How did you feel while the respective companies were doing this? Is there anyone in the room that remembers reading the headline, "Palm splits into PalmSource and PalmOne," and thought, "Man, that's some sexy marketing right there. I need to get me a Treo but quick." No. We saw it and thought, "the shark has been jumped, the drain is being circled." Yes, you did.

While I'm on a roll, for shits and giggles, let's look at the bastard sibling of rebranding, "editions."

Toothpaste. Now was that Crest Tartar Control plus Whitening, or Crest Whitening plus Tartar Control? And did you want that in paste or gel? I swear, we need meta-toothpaste, where it's formulated on the spot. You have a big board with all sorts of shit like "mint," "sparkly" (for the child or man-child in your household), "tartar control," and buzzword of the year, "whitening." Then you push a whole bunch and hit the MIX button, and get a toothpaste tube with all that shit custom-made. It'd be like ordering an HP server; it'd even warn you about compatibility issues! But I digress.

Windows 98 > Windows XP. Then it hit the fan. Windows Vista Home Basic + Home Premium + Business + Ultimate. I won't get into Windows 7, but suffice to say there's an edition for everyone, even your crazy next-door neighbor that listens to Yanni all day, has an alpaca fetish, and taught his kids to communicate solely in Klingon. (Sorry if I've touched a nerve amongst anyone here.)

Sun is particularly adept at this. You can almost taste the management schizophrenia: Solaris > Solaris Express Community Edition + OpenSolaris + Solaris > Solaris + OpenSolaris (not including Indiana, Nevada, et al. the distinctions between which I'm not sure anyone truly understands). Besides, half the stuff will be discontinued by the time you read this, so why bother itemizing it all?

The moral of the story, kids, is that rebranding is for the desperate, and editions are for suckers.

KDE3 was a very solid house. But the foundation just can't take building anything more on top. Qt3 is dead, arts is dead, so much of the technlogy is dead. Maybe they got a little bit carried away when they designed KDE4 but the foundation had to change. Going back to KDE3 just isn't an option.

I believe their official position—prior to the rebranding—was that the "K" doesn't stand for anything. As written in the summary, KDE expands to "K Desktop Environment", which is not a recursive acronym.

It's actually kind of funny how many countless tons of shit I had to go through with Windows computers to get the sound working.

Your statement may have been true a few years ago, but not anymore. Ever since the driver certifications I had sound cards not working in XP SP2 and above anymore. I actually had to run Linux to get my soundcard to work again.

Linux keeps evolving. Anti-Linux trolls will always be around. The same goes for people who are uninformed.

WTF is Aqua? WTF is Glass? WTF is Snow Leopard? WTF is Safari? WTF do I need to Access? How in the world does one lauch a Word? WTF am I supposed to Excel at? WTF is Vista? WTF is Zune? WTF is that Blue Ray? WTF is in Ex Box 360? WTF is anything without lots of marketing money?

I pondered your title for a moment. Was this an old english spelling test? Wrods coming from a Celtic derivation of the word Words? I realize you were trying to include the equine species in your comments and I thank you from my mare. She gets very confused over wrods or Words. As a German Trakhener, she is partial to SUSE and would rather Linux get away from the US centric orientation of Kubuntu.

Alas, her hooves are not quite capable of operating a keyboard so she has to rely on my fingers, which are

Now to be fair, "plasma" is the name of KDE4's new widgets engine (and widgets include everything from panels to "applets" to the desktop, in line with KDE's extensible/customisable SOP). It's not as if the term "plasma" has nothing to do with their product (arguably picking "plasma" as a name for their widget engine was a marketdroid-ish thing to do in the first place - but still preferable to "KDE Kwidgets Kengine").

Oddly, it actually does. I've enabled both the "Dialog Parent" and "Dim Inactive" desktop effects, basically darkening everything other than where my focus is, which, in effect, makes that application whiter and brighter than everything else. That contrast gives the illusion of whiter/brighter, which has actually helped my productivity on the machine.

Making the whites whiter and the brights brighter does seem to be part of their direction.